This Week in DVD & Blu-ray is a column that compiles all the latest info regarding new DVD and Blu-ray releases, sales, and exclusive deals from stores including Target, Best Buy and Fry’s.

Please don’t take the commentary on the movies and TV shows too seriously, as they’re meant not to be reviews but rather previews that include the general thoughts and ramblings of a twice-committed DVD addict. The categories represent solely the author’s intentions towards the films at hand, and are in no way meant to be a reflection on what he thinks other people should rent or buy. So if he ends up putting a movie you like in the “Skip it” section without having seen it, please keep in mind that the time you could spend leaving a spiteful but ultimately futile comment could instead be used for more pleasant things in life. Like buying DVDs.

ADVENTURELAND Adventureland does not redefine coming-of-age movies. It tells a familiar tale, and it does so with a number of story elements that we’ve seen many times before.

It’s also far better than most of its competition.

Watching Adventureland, it’s obvious that this is a very personal film for writer/director Greg Mottola. It’s real. It’s relatable. It’s charming, sweet and thoroughly engaging from start to finish. The film has plenty of laughs too, but making “silly gags” the focus of the film’s marketing campaign was a mistake. As much as the studios may want to make the film look like the next Superbad (which Mottola also directed), it simply isn’t. The jokes don’t feel like calculated gags intended to make you burst into tears with laughter. The humor has a more natural flow, always present in the interactions of the characters and the inherent comedy of the situations, but never detracting from the heart of the story: the relationship between the two young leads, played to perfection by Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart. If you’re going into the film expecting something else, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment.Blu-ray? Yes.Notable Extras: DVD – Commentary with director Greg Mottola and actor Jesse Eisenberg, deleted scenes, a Just My Life: The Making Of Adventureland featurette, and a Picture Music Selection feature. Blu-ray – Everything on the DVD, plus 3 additional features (“Frigo’s Ball Tap”, “Lisa P’s Guide To Style”, “Welcome to Adventureland”), and a digital copy of the film.

Senator Entertainment has released an unrated uncensored Totally NSFW red band movie trailer for The Informers. Based on the novel by author Bret Easton Ellis (American Psycho, Rules Of Attraction). Sundance director Geoffrey Gilmore admits that the film’s drugs and sex filled story might be too much for some people. “If you want to take a shot at it, it’s a full target,” Gilmore admitted. Senator Entertainment’s Marco Weber says that “it will be polarizing, it isn’t for everyone.” The film is already getting a 9.6 on IMDb from some early test screenings. I’ve heard that Amber Heard is naked throughout the entire movie, and the trailer you are about to watch after the jump is only the tip of the iceberg. Leave your thoughts in the comments.

If a trailer begins with New Order’s “Blue Monday” and a soundbite from Ronald Regan praising religion followed by shots of cocaine and humping, it’s a safe bet thatauthor Bret Easton Ellis was involved. The Informers is the latest adaptation in Ellis’s bibliography (American Psycho, Less Than Zero, The Rules of Attraction) and he also co-wrote its screenplay.

Set in Los Angeles during the early ’80s, the movie examines a cornocopia of effed-up, unhappy lives, as played by Kim Basinger, Billy Bob Thorton, Winona Ryder, Mickey Rourke, Chris Isaak, and the late Brad Renfro. The book’s supernatural elements were apparently scrapped, but director Gregor Jordan (Ned Kelly) seems to have laid on the period-appropriate gloom, doom and glam. Some will say it looks edgy, others “edgy,” and the rest will say, “I hate the ’80s.” The film opens later this year.

Compared to most authors, onetime New York it-boy Bret Easton Ellis‘s works have had a pretty good translation record at the cinema. American Psycho, The Rules of Attraction and Less Than Zero were all pretty faithful, quality adaptations that kept Ellis’s sensational penchant for drugs, kinky sex and sociopathic detachment intact. A tall order these days. Next in line is this fall’s The Informers. Not only did Ellis co-write the screenplay for his 1995 interlocked collection of twisted tales set in the ’80s, but the film easily has the coolest cast of any Ellis flick: Mickey Rourke, Kim Basinger, Winona Ryder, Billy Bob Thornton, Pineapple Express‘ Amber Heard and Brad Renfro‘s last theatrical role.

Well, now it seems that the key element that made The Informers stand out from its darkly hedonistic pack, a good dose of the supernatural, including a vampire storyline starring Superman Returns‘ Brandon Routh as the book’s main vampire, Jamie, has either been “exorcised” or dumped altogether. Odd. Actor John Graham, who has a rather large role as the son to Thornton’s Hollywood exec, expressed dissonance about the film’s seemingly last minute change to IGN…

“There are no more vampires. They took the vampires out. There are no zombies or monsters either,” he announces. “This is more about the narcissistic side of people’s characters. God knows why they took the vampire characters out. I can’t say if I was pleased or displeased, that is just the way it is.”

Sounds as if Routh is no longer in the film, eh? If so, that’s a pretty big blow for him, as it would have given the All-American actor a dose of indie cred. There’s speculation that Ellis himself made the decision to ditch the fanged murderers from the film version due to criticism the book’s subplot received originally. Ho-hum. Fans will be bummed. Has to be more to it than that though, right? Perhaps director Gregor Jordan (Buffalo Soldiers, Ned Kelly) wasn’t digging the footage? If anyone has a contact or, cough, informant on this film, let us know.

Ellis is really starting to dive into Hollywood, with an adaptation of his batshit semi-autobiographical Lunar Park due in 2009, along with The Frog King, another writer-obsessed flick starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt that he wrote an original screenplay for. Also kicking around is Roger Avary’s third (yes, third) adaptation Glamorama, which would follow The Rules of Attraction and its obscure, never released, mysterious spin-off film Glitterati starring Kip Pardue.

Discuss: Any Informers fans pissed? We haven’t heard much from this flick as of yet, but how many of you anticipate it? Who’s seen Glitterati? What’s the best Ellis movie?Â

Billy Bob Thorton (Sling Blade) and Kim Basinger (LA Confidential) have signed on to join Brandon Routh (Superman Returns), Austin Nichols (John from Cincinnati), Ashley Olsen (Full House), Jon Foster (Terminator 3) and Lou Pucci (Thumbsucker) in the big screen adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’ The Informers. Sounds like a pretty well rounded cast, but what is Ashley Olsen doing out in the sun?

I love Bret Easton Ellis. You might not know who he is, but you’ve probably seen a movie based off one of his books: American Psycho, Less Than Zero, and Roger Avary’s drastically underrated adaptation of The Rules of Attraction.

Gregor Jordan (Buffalo Soldiers) is directing the movie based a screenplay Nicholas Jarecki wrote with Ellis.

The Informers was first published in 1995, a collection of loosely connected short stories captures a week in Los Angeles in 1983. The stories feature movie executives, rock stars, a vampire and as Ellis’ other works, various “morally challenged characters in adventures laced with sex, drugs and violence.”